December 1930: The United States is in the middle of a Great Depression and nowhere have the hard times hit more severe than remote, rural Tater Knob, Alabama. Trapper, hunter and small farmer I. A. "Buck" Rivers is riding out the hard times as a backwoods bachelor living a simple life, much as he did before the depression hit. Buck was more than pleased that December day when he got an unexpected letter from his best friend J.C. "Wart" McGee. Wart had suddenly disappeared a year and a half previously, without notice, to ride out the hard times as a train jumping hobo. As Buck and his new pen...